Strip Poker

by Nancy Bartholomew

  I shook my head. “Honey, the po-lice don’t work like that.”

  Yolanda cocked her head and smiled, making her look like a pink and blue parrot. “Well, I’m ready to bet that they’ve got the wrong suspect and I got the right one. I’m marketable. I’m gonna sew this whole thing up, and cops just love shit like that.”

  It was driving me nuts. I wanted to jump across the three feet between us, grab her by the neck, and shake her until she gave in, but somehow she didn’t look like the type to cave. There was a hard, brittle edge to her. No, she needed to be played.

  “All right,” I said. “Be back here tonight at eight. I’ll have an answer.”

  “Bring the cop,” she said. “And tell him to bring cash, and I don’t mean petty cash. Oh, and tell him I want witness protection. You know,” she said, nodding toward the exterior walls of the trailer, “like a house, a car, and an identity.”

  I laughed. “Unless you’re talking offering up tapes and a confession, I don’t think the Panama City Police Department can deliver on all that.”

  Yolanda looked at me, her eyes darkening to a deep, almost navy blue. “I think what I got is good, but remember, it vanishes like the wind if he talks or comes bringing a flock of police with him.”

  “Then stay out of sight. If you’re holding a murderer by the tail, your ass is gonna get bitten.”

  Yolanda shifted her weight and looked toward the door. She reached in her huge leopard-skin tote bag and drew out a longbarreled gun. It glinted in the sunlight that bounced in through the kitchen window. It was a freaking cannon.

  “Girl,” she said, “I grew up on the street in Detroit. Don’t no little low-life punk rattle my cage.”

  Whatever.

  I watched as she stuck the gun back in her bag and turned to go.

  “Eight o’clock,” I said. “Here.”

  “Gotcha.” She opened the door and walked outside. Fluffy stood looking after her, not at all inclined to follow her like she would any other visitor. Fluffy had made her mind up that this girl was trouble and it didn’t bear risking her own little hide to be associated with her. Fluffy didn’t do complicated either.

  Twenty-six

  I was a coward. I left Nailor a voice mail at his office. It was simple. I told him he could hook up with a potential witness at eight o’clock at my place. I told him the conditions and I told him she promised to have the real goods for him. I told him that, should I be absent, the key was under the doormat. But I couldn’t say, “Make yourself at home.” The words just wouldn’t come out of my mouth. I didn’t want him comfortable and I didn’t want him to think of my place as his home. Not now. Not in light of everything that had happened.

  After I’d left my message and disconnected, I just stood there, staring at the receiver like an idiot.

  “Fluff,” I said, waking her from her twilight sleep, “let’s ride.” I picked a name from the hat of suspects and decided to start investigating. After all, a bimbo like Yolanda was probably looking to work an angle. Just because she said she could wrap up and bag the case didn’t mean she could bag it with the right guy. No, it only meant that she felt she could produce something that would advance her own lowlife career.

  I walked across the narrow street to Raydean’s house. As usual, Raydean opened the front door before I could knock the secret it’s-just-me knock. She handed me the keys to her ancient 1962 Plymouth Fury and looked back over her shoulder.

  “You need me?” she asked. “I’m receiving a message and it might be important.” In the background the TV was blaring and Oprah was talking about finding her spirit. I stared at it for a second then looked back at Raydean.

  “You got a message coming in from Oprah?” I asked.

  Raydean looked at me as if I’d lost my mind. “No, honey! What do you take me for, a soccer mom?” She snorted. “I’m waiting on my stockbroker to call. He was checking out this new biotech company, gonna let me know was it worthwhile.” She laughed. “Oprah! What? Are you the last to know?”

  I raised a puzzled eyebrow.

  “Oprah’s the Defender of the Universe,” she said. “She’s got one eye on the Flemish and the other on God. And honey, ain’t a one of ’em gonna make a move in the wrong direction while she’s at the helm!” She looked back at the set. “Now,” she said, turning back to me, “git on with it. I got to wait by the phone. Just call me if you need reinforcements. I’m sure you can handle whatever comes up. They’re only humans after all.”

  Before I could answer, she closed the door, leaving me on the outside and her on the inside receiving the true message. It was amazing.

  Fluffy and I pulled the gray tarp off of the Fury, backed it out of Raydean’s leaning garage, and started on the road toward the beach. A little pine-tree air freshener hung from the rearview mirror, swinging back and forth like a metronome. Fluffy watched it, her head gently swaying in time with the tree.

  “You are getting sleepy,” I said to her. “Very sleepy.”

  Fluffy ignored me.

  “When I count to three, you will become a German shepherd.” Still no response. “One … two … three,” I said, my voice a perfect monotone.

  Fluffy barked, startling me. I looked over and she was smiling.

  “You are a ferocious German shepherd,” I said.

  Fluffy’s grin grew broader.

  “I could use a dog like you in my outfit. I am on the trail of a vicious killer and the only troop I have is a little pissant dog named Fluffy.”

  Fluffy snarled. Apparently the word “pissant” had thrown her off.

  “A dog like you, Fritz, is a dog to take into battle. We will defeat the enemy! We will defend the lives and reputations of our fellow countrymen!”

  Fluffy jumped to a standing position now, swaying against me as she yapped at the tiny pine tree. Maybe there was something to this hypnosis junk. Or maybe Fluffy had a phobia of air fresheners.

  I pulled into the parking lot of the Busted Beaver and prepared to do battle. I looked over at the Fluff. She was snarling now, rehearsing her lines as a vicious attack dog, or more likely, feeling carsick from having stared at a swaying pine tree the entire ride over to the beach.

  “I shall return. If I am not back by nightfall, go on without me,” I said. “Don’t look back on this chapter of our lives together,” I said solemnly. “It is enough to know that we served side by side in the valiant campaign that was Vincent Gambuzzo’s murder rap.”

  I pulled the rearview mirror over where I could look into it to adjust my hair and put on more Passionate Red lipstick. When invading enemy turf, it never hurt to use all the weapons at one’s disposal. And Izzy Rodriguez was not an enemy to be taken lightly.

  Izzy’s place was a slum, a low-slung pink concrete cinder-block ghetto of a strip joint. I wouldn’t dignify it by calling it a club. A club connotes class, and the Busted Beaver was as close to low class as you could get without being illegal. It was a dirty, sleazy bar that found itself haunted by the liquor control board and the police.

  Izzy’s girls were the worst in the business. They did what he said, not because they wanted to, but because they were doped-up, strung-out victims. They wore cheap polyester baby-doll negligees trimmed with fuzzy marabou that had flattened with age and the grime of greasy makeup and cigarette smoke. Some of Izzy’s girls were no more than seventeen, maybe younger, and the rest were too old and too out of shape to be naked anywhere but in the privacy of their own homes.

  I shivered as I stepped into the dark interior of the Busted Beaver, and it wasn’t because the air-conditioning was set ten degrees below comfortable. Izzy’s club reeked of abuse, physical and mental.

  There was a stage against the far wall. A disco ball strobed colored lights in all directions, camouflaging everything about the dancers but their most basic body outlines. In the darkened room, by fractured, gyrating light, you couldn’t see tattoos or scars or stretchmarks. But then, the customers in the Busted Beaver could’ve cared less. They l
ooked for raunch, not style.

  Izzy Rodriguez was sitting at the far end of the bar, smoking a cigar and watching me. When my eyes met his, there was no surprise. It was as if he expected me, as if he knew I would come to him.

  I was more than tempted to turn around and walk back outside into the daylight, to draw a deep breath of fresh air and walk away, but I couldn’t. This was something that needed to be done.

  I kept my eyes on his, walking toward him at a slow deliberate pace, aware of the men who swiveled on their stools to watch me, aware of the strippers’ malevolent glares from the stage. I was cutting into their tip money, distracting the few excuses for customers that might be so inclined as to reach into their pockets to produce a greasy dollar or two.

  When I stood in front of him, he gestured to the bartender. “Hey, anything she wants, all right?”

  The bartender nodded and I smiled. “I know alcohol is used to disinfect,” I said, “but I doubt I’ll be here long enough to become contaminated.”

  Izzy’s face darkened, and a drunk sitting behind me snickered.

  “What can I do for you, Sierra?” Izzy asked. “You can’t be looking for work with that attitude.”

  I leaned my back against the smooth wooden lip of the bar and stared at Izzy for a moment, trying to gauge the best way to crawl under his lizard-like skin.

  “No, Iz, I’m not shopping for work, and if I was it wouldn’t be here. No,” I said, looking up at the stage then back to him, “I’m hoping to figure you out.”

  “Figure me out?” he echoed.

  “Yeah, I’m just curious what a guy like you’s gotta do to get a pro like Yolanda to shill a poker game.”

  Izzy’s facial expression remained empty, but I thought I saw something flicker behind his eyes.

  “I’m at a loss here,” he said. “I don’t know this Yolanda person. I believe you are trying to imply that I need to cheat to play poker, and I must assure you that I don’t care enough to do that. What would be the point?”

  As he said this, he appealed to the bartender and the few customers who were watching our exchange. He even managed a brief chuckle, but as I watched his hands, they began a nervous drumming pattern on the bar in front of him.

  “Yolanda,” I said, as if speaking to a child. “The blonde who was at the game where Denny Watley got capped.”

  Izzy smiled. “Ah,” he said, with a knowing nod. “Angel, the tits with a body attached.” Then he stared pointedly at my chest.

  “You hired Yolanda. Why?”

  Izzy turned and signaled the bartender to bring him another drink, then looked back at me.

  “I don’t need no pro,” he said. “If I want somebody, I got a crew ready, willing, and very able.” He looked at the girls lining the stage, all of them completely naked and working the poles. “See what I mean?” he asked.

  “I’m thinking maybe you were looking for real talent that night, someone with half a brain, someone to keep the players distracted while you set up Vincent.”

  “That’s nuts,” he said, but now he was angry. His face reddened and his eyes glowed when he looked at me. “I’m a patient man, Sierra. I put up with your shit when I came to offer Vincent’s dancers some work. I figured you were just overwrought. But you’re stepping outside of what I can tolerate now.”

  His hand tightened into a fist and he stepped down off of his bar stool, thus becoming a good four inches shorter than me. I was aware of a presence behind me, and when I turned I saw that two huge bouncers had materialized from the darkness.

  “You don’t come skipping into my club and call me everything but a murderer,” he said. “You have overstepped the boundaries by a mile.”

  “Oh, did I leave that part out?” I said. “I beg your pardon. You are most certainly a murderer. I don’t know if you whacked Denny or not, but I do know this—every time one of your girls dies from AIDS or a drug overdose, it’s you. You’re the one that takes in runaways and women too lost to figure out any option but getting naked. You’re the one who sets them up and gives them drugs so they don’t have to think about where they are and what they’re doing, so they can offer themselves to anyone with a dollar to spare. You’re the one gets them so strung out they can’t do anything but flat-back it for their next fix.” I sneered at him. “Yeah, I’m sorry, all right, I left out murderer.”

  I felt the bouncers on either side of me grab my arms and pull me backward. I fought to break loose, but their grips were like iron vises and I was powerless to get away. The only part of my body I could move was my mouth, and it was making up for the rest of me.

  “How’s it feel to deal in flesh, Izzy? What’s it like to force women into slavery because they’re craving a drug you put into their bodies?”

  “Shut up!” he yelled. “You’re nothing but a whore yourself!”

  “Oh no, don’t mistake me for a woman without a choice,” I yelled back. “That’s the thing about dancers, we choose. That’s the thing about Gambuzzo, he don’t take children. He don’t take anybody that comes to him because she has to. And he don’t take their souls by giving them drugs. He ain’t you, Rodriguez. On his worst day, he ain’t you on your best.”

  We hurtled through the doors and out into the parking lot. The two bouncers still had me in a death grip, but now they were out for fun.

  “I bet you like it rough,” one whispered in my ear.

  The other one didn’t say a word. Instead he screamed and dropped my arm. Fluffy, or maybe I should say Fritz, had galvanized into action. She had come at a dead run and launched herself right into the man’s very core. When you’re a chihuahua and vertically challenged in the powerhouse realm, you go for all the gusto you can get. Fluffy had tapped the mother lode. She sank her teeth into the man’s crotch and shook her head back and forth, clinging to her prey like cheap cologne.

  I kicked my one remaining restrainer with the sharpest point of my stilettos and reached into the back pocket of my jeans for my knife. I was on autopilot. I didn’t think about what I was doing, I reacted. In a moment the knife was open and aimed at his heart.

  I held it, weaving it back and forth in front of him, never giving him a solid target to aim for.

  “You think I like it rough, asshole? Why don’t you come on and try me?”

  “Jesus, Sierra,” a now-familiar male voice said, “do you ever give it a rest?” I took a quick glimpse over my shoulder and there he was: Moose Lavotini, accompanied by his entourage and one very sleepy Thomas.

  “This don’t involve you,” I said. “This one I can handle on my own.”

  Moose was smiling, amused. “Looks like you and the mutt have it covered.” He turned and started walking away toward his waiting sedan. “Come on, fellas,” he said, “she’s got it covered.”

  They were leaving. I looked back at the two bouncers and took a quick inventory. One lay on the ground and one was still standing, but backing away. Fluff was standing beside me growling like a German shepherd. Did I have it covered? I figured yes.

  I looked at Fluffy and decided our work at the Busted Beaver was finished. “Come on, honey,” I said, stepping slowly toward the car, keeping my eyes on my new friends. “Let’s blow this pop stand.”

  Fluffy ran ahead of me, leaped up and through the open driver’s side window, and waited for me to follow. The guy on the ground was struggling to stand, assisted by the other. The two of them looked like they were thinking about following up, but then they saw the Moose’s car hovering on the edge of the parking lot and decided it wasn’t worth the risk.

  I cranked the Plymouth and pulled out of the lot and into traffic, the Mafia staff car right behind me.

  “Fluff,” I said, “this is not conducive to me conducting business. I can’t hardly detect with a crowd following my every move.”

  Fluffy understood. At first I thought she was looking in the rearview mirror to track our followers, but then I realized she was hooked back up in her love affair with the scented pine tree.


  Maybe it was time to check in with Vincent Gambuzzo.

  Twenty-seven

  Gambuzzo didn’t look good in prison orange. He shuffled into the visitors’ area, took a hard wooden chair behind a thick Plexiglas screen, and favored me with his best scowl. Without black sunglasses and a silk shirt, Vincent looked a lot more like his used-car-dealer genetic history than usual. The stubble on his chin wasn’t helping either.

  There was something else about Vincent. He looked beaten, defeated by his situation and left to hang, alone. His eyes had deep circles underneath the thick lids and his overall color was a pasty gray. He looked as if he didn’t care and no longer expected to beat life at its own game.

  I picked up the phone and leaned in toward him. “Big guy,” I said, “how you doin’?”

  He held the receiver against his ear and chuckled dryly. “How the fuck you think?” he said. But it was a weak response, not at all like him when he’s pissed. “They got me locked in here eating prison food with a bunch of loser junkies and cons and you want to know how am I doin’?” He shrugged. “I’m fine.”

  “I’m working on it. Ernie’s working on it. How’s come you’re still in here? Ernie didn’t spring you yet?”

  Gambuzzo stared at me, like maybe this was class and I’d been absent when they gave out the test information.

  “Judge denied bail. Says I’m a flight risk. Me, a flight risk!” His lip curled, a tiny sign that the old Vincent was in there somewhere, lurking. “You know what it is,” he said, leaning in toward me. “It’s that damn DEA agent, and that,” he declared, leaning back in his chair, “is your fault.”

  “Mine?”

  “Yep, and don’t we both know it. She knows you’re knocking back the nasty with her ex. She’s gunning for anybody you know. That’s how’s come they’re looking to frame me on illegal gambling and dope dealing.”

  I shook my head. The drug angle and Vincent was all wrong. Vincent was about as anti-drug as anybody I knew, but the gambling charge, well, that was Vincent’s karma kicking him in the ass. Still, why else would Carla get involved?